e's the wonder they come here with them empty on a
Friday? Fetch me a coal for the pipe, Pat."

Whilst Pat walked into the kitchen for a lighted piece of turf
(_Hibernice_, coal) to kindle his patron's pipe, Thady stuck the said
pipe in his jaw, and continued poring over the unsatisfactory figures
of the Ballycloran rent-book.

"I tell you what it is, Pat," said he, after finishing the process of
blowing, and drawing, and throwing the coal on the earthen floor, and
pressing down the hot burning tobacco with the top of his forefinger
repeatedly, "Misthur Joe Reynolds will out of that. I told him so
last April, and divil a penny of his we've seen since; he don't do
the best he can for us; and my belief is, he hinders the others;
eh, Brady?" and he looked up into Brady's face for confirmation or
refutation of this opinion. But that gentleman, contrary to his
usual wont, seemed to have no opinion on the matter; he continued
scratching his head, and swinging one leg, while he stood on the
other. Thady, finding that his counsellor said nothing, continued,

"Joe Reynolds will out of that this time, d'you hear? what has he on
that bit of land of his?"

"Pratees mostly, Misthur Thady. He had half an acre of whate; he
parted that on the ground to ould Tierney; he owed Tierney money."

"An' so the tenants buy the crops from one another, and yet won't pay
their own rents. Well, my father's to blame himself; av he'd put a
man like Keegan over them, or have let the land to some rough hand
as would make them pay, divil a much he need care for Flannelly this
day."

"An' you'd be for puttin' a stranger over thim, Misthur Thady; an'
they that would stand between you an' all harum, or the masthur, or
the old masthur afore him; becaze of the dirthy money, and becaze a
blagguard and a black ruffian like Flannelly has an ould paper signed
by the masthur, or the like? An' as for Mr. Hyacinth Keegan,--I'm
thinking, the first time he goes collectin' on the lands of
Drumleesh, it's a warm welcome he'll be gettin'; at any rate, he'd
have more recates in his carcass than in his pocket, that day."

"That's very fine talk, Pat; but if Keegan had them, he'd tame them,
as he has others before; not but I'd be sorry they should be in his
hands, the robber, bad as they are. But it'll come to that, whether
or no. How's my father to get this money for Flannelly?"

"D----n Flannelly!" was Brady's easy solution of the family
difficulties. "Let him